We come across homes where people have 'played around' technically with automation.

Some can be quite good from a design install perspective but I have to say most are not good and some dangerous.

A good starting point is to look at the different areas within the home that can be hard wired - lighting heating security networks phone door entry there is more......choose the installed product.... if the product happens to be the same for heating as it is for lighting then fine.

Make sure that when you design include the overall control as a seperate heading. You may then end up with an app that does everything or seperate apps.

All of the above will then determine what you want to do totally automatically which will in turn determine where you place any logic.

First rule is that a light switch is a light switch if you disconnect the network or the heating or the app then the light switch still acts as a light switch !!!!

Thanks. Out of interest on the light switch is a light switch comment, when you install a cbus lighting network on a rewire, do you ever retrofit conventional (redundant) twin and earth to the switches at the same time? In the event the customer should sell up and the next buyer doesn't want cbus for example, he could then remove cbus components and go back to mechanical switches without putting new cables in walls. Interested in anyone's view of best practice here.